


Like No One Ever Was

by speccygeekgrrl



Series: MST3K Alternate Universes [22]
Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000, Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pokemon Fusion, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, obviously Kinga and Max are Team Rocket, wait a second this was supposed to be a dumb little thing how did it catch feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 21:31:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16048952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: All Jonah wants to do is catch a Shinx to add to his electric and steel type team. The weather doesn't cooperate. And to make matters worse, once he finds shelter, it's already occupied by the jerks who've been following him around for months. They might be jerks, but maybe they aren't irredeemable.





	Like No One Ever Was

**Author's Note:**

> Twitch has been showing a marathon of the entire Pokemon anime. This is the inevitable result of that. I have wanted to give Max a Clefairy basically since the first time I watched season 11.
> 
>  
> 
> [I assembled each one's team including ones they don't directly refer to in the fic but are still on their team... enjoy the gratuitous bonus content I guess?](https://www.pillowfort.io/posts/127938)

Under cover of the trees in the forest at the base of Mt. Coronet, Jonah only realized a storm was brewing a couple of minutes before it broke over his head. There wasn't much he could do besides curse and keep moving, hoping against hope to find some kind of shelter in the trees he'd been walking through. Ever since he'd gotten to Sinnoh it had been one unfortunate event after another, Team Rocket harrying his heels the whole time he'd been on the hunt for a Shinx. He'd had his heart set on a Shinx since the first time he'd read about them in the Pokedex, but hadn't come across one in the two weeks he'd been wandering the region. He'd thought that moving toward the mountain might help, but so far all that had done was get him soaked to the bone.

He trudged along in the rain, vision gone blurry from the water spotting his glasses, and wondered if he had any Pokemon on his team that could help, then pulled a Pokeball out of his pack and tossed it. "Skarmory, help a guy out, would you?" His Skarmory stretched its wings and tilted its head at him. "I'm sorry, buddy, I know you hate the rain, but I can't see anything in this mess. Can you find me a shelter for the night?" Skarmory let out a cry and rose into the air, swiftly flying out of Jonah's very limited range of sight. He sighed and dug around in his pack to pull out a tomat berry to snack on while he waited for his scout to come back, leaning with his back against a tree until a boom of thunder made him rethink the wisdom of standing so close to a tall object... not that he wasn't already a tall object... 

It only took a few minutes for Skarmory to return, and it guided Jonah toward the rise of the mountain and to the mouth of a cave. Jonah hesitated at the entrance, seeing the flicker of light from deep inside the cave. Maybe this was where the Shinx lived? Their fur did shine sometimes. Just in case, he got out a Pokeball before he walked in.

"Oh, you have  _got_  to be kidding me," he sighed when he found the source of the light: a campfire, around which his two least favorite members of Team Rocket were sitting with their Pokemon.

"Wha-- what are  _you_  doing here, twerp?" Kinga asked, sitting up straight from her slouch and sneering at him. 

"Coming in from the rain," Jonah said with a shrug, putting the empty Pokeball away. "It's bad out there."

"You can share our fire... for the cost of your Pikachu!" she said. Across the fire, Max rolled his eyes.

"Oh, we can lay off him for one night, can't we? We've been chasing him across three regions and he's kicked our asses every single time we fight him. Can we take a break from it?"

"He only beats us every time because your fairy types get crushed by his steel types," Kinga said. "I can pull my own weight in a battle. You're the break point."

"Don't type shame me," Max said. 

"Clefairy!" his Clefairy added in a tone of pure offense. 

"Exactly! What she said."

"Ugh,  _fine_. You can share our fire and we won't fight you until we leave the cave, okay?"

"I'll take it," Jonah said, setting down his pack and reaching into it for a dry cloth to clean his glasses off.  Once he could see, he set about drying off his Skarmory. Sure, he could have just sent it back into the Pokeball, but Jonah was firm on the point of treating all his Pokemon with love and respect, and Skarmory had done a great job at doing what he'd asked. The armored bird extended one sharp wing to let him polish the bladed feathers while shooting a dirty look at Kinga and her Alolan Marowak that had given it a beating the last time they'd seen each other.  The Marowak pulled its bone out of the fire and glared back at the Skarmory.

"So... what brought you to Sinnoh?" Max asked after an awkward silence.

"I'm trying to catch a Shinx... I really want a Luxray on my team." Jonah wrinkled his nose at them. "I know why  _you're_  in Sinnoh."

"Obviously," Kinga said. "You know, we'd leave you alone if you'd just give us that Pikachu."

"You can't have my Pikachu! You can't have any of my Pokemon. They're my friends. Of course, you don't know what it's like to actually be friends with your Pokemon."

"Clefairy!" Clefairy leaned against Max and glared at Jonah while Max put his arm around her. "Fairy, Clefairy!"

"She has a point," Max said. "You don't know what we're like when we're not battling you."

"Well, if you're actually friends with your Pokemon, why would you ever think I'd just  _give_ you mine?"

"We know you won't give it to us, that's why we keep fighting you for it," Kinga said. "Obviously." 

"Yeah, well, you suck out loud and I'll keep kicking your asses if you keep trying to steal my friends." Jonah finished drying off his Skarmory and fed it a sitrus berry before sending it back into its ball. He sat down across the fire from his foes, studying them in probably the first quiet moment they'd had in the year and a half these two jerks had been harrying him, and then he sat up straighter. "What smells so good?"

"That would be our dinner," Max said, getting up to stir the pot that was hanging over the fire. "Are you hungry?"

"Don't  _feed_  him," Kinga said scornfully. "He's our enemy."

"I don't consider you my enemies," Jonah said. "Just annoyances I can't seem to shake."

"That's worse!"

"I cooked it, so I get to decide who eats it, and I'm willing to share," Max said. 

"Even though I beat you all the time?" Jonah asked. Max shrugged.

"My Pokemon won't ever evolve if they don't battle. And you don't only have steel types. I mean, it would be nice if you favored electric types when you fight me, but you're just trying to win, I can't really fault you for it."

"Thank you for being reasonable," Jonah said. "And thank you for the food," he added, when Max handed him a bowl full of soup. 

"You're welcome." Max offered Kinga the next bowl, which she accepted with a sulky look and a huff, and Max sighed and served himself, sitting back down and leaning against his Clefairy. "So where are you going after this?"

"Oh, like I'm going to make it easier for you to follow me around?"

"We don't have any trouble doing it as is," Kinga muttered. "You're not exactly hard to spot." Jonah looked down at his bright yellow hoodie and shrugged. 

"I'm just making conversation," Max said. "You said you're looking for Shinx, right? They're not on this side of the mountain. They're on the side with the blue Shellos."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Honestly. I went there with my dad on vacation once, we saw a whole pack of Shinx."

"But you don't have one?"

"I'm a fairy type trainer," Max said. "I understand them. I've never had much luck with other types."

"The way you phrase that makes me think there's at least one interesting story attached," Jonah said, and Max shrugged.

"You don't really care, do you? We're just those annoying Team Rocket members following you around. You don't care about our lives."

"We're stuck here at least for the rest of the night," Jonah said. "If you don't want to tell me that's fine, but I am interested in what you have to say."

"Don't make friends with him," Kinga said scornfully. "Remember what you are, Max." Max didn't say anything, just lowered his head and focused on his dinner. His Clefairy patted his arm sympathetically. 

"I'll trade you a story for a story," Jonah offered. "I'll tell you about how I got my Pichu if you tell me why you're only a fairy type trainer." Max glanced up in surprise.

"You raised your Pikachu from a Pichu?"

"Yeah. I've had him for years. There was an infestation of Pichu in an old substation in my neighborhood. My friend Mike dared me to go catch one. I got zapped like crazy, but it got scared when it zapped me and started crying and I caught it then. Pichu are real crybabies, they get shocked themselves every time they shock someone else. It took me ages to get mine to trust me enough to stop shocking me and then bawling about it every time it came out of the Pokeball."

"I got my Clefairy as a Cleffa too," Max said. "I went to go watch a lunar eclipse, and I found her dancing in a clearing. I was surprised to see her alone because I thought Cleffa stuck together, but there weren't any others around. Just her. I thought she would stop dancing when she saw me, but she didn't. Not until the eclipse was at full dark. She got scared then and came over to me. I was so surprised, I didn't even have a Pokeball with me, but she climbed right into my arms." 

"That's cute," Jonah said. "She chose you, not the other way around."

"Yeah! And the weird thing was that I could understand her right away. Even after the moon came back out, she didn't want to leave me. So I brought her home and we've been together ever since."

"Clefairy!"

"Oh, right! I  _did_  try to catch a Shinx when I saw them with my dad. One of them Wild Charged me so bad I needed to see a doctor. I also got Fury Swiped by a Meowth, Razor Leafed by a Chikorita, Water Gunned by a Squirtle, and a Geodude broke my arm with a Rock Throw. Cleffa was the first Pokemon that didn't attack me when I found her."

"That's because you're as cute and useless as all the fairy types," Kinga said, rolling her eyes. "What a touching moment. You suckers and your baby Pokemon stories. I caught all my Pokemon like a real trainer: by battling them until I could catch them."

"So how'd you get your first one?" Jonah asked, and Kinga looked into the fire and scowled.

"I got a Charmander like most people get their first Pokemon. No big deal."

"And where is it now? I've never seen you use a Charmander or a Charmeleon or a Charizard." Kinga frowned even harder.

"It doesn't matter what happened to my Charmander." Jonah arched a brow and glanced at Max, who shook his head quickly. 

"Okay, jeez. Sorry I asked. But you do favor fire types still," he said, looking at her Marowak, who twirled its flaming bone threateningly.

"Yeah, favor. I have a more diverse team than either of you."

"It's not that diverse, all your Pokemon are Alolan. There's nothing wrong with a single type team," Max said. 

"You're not a gym leader, it's pretentious," Kinga said.

"I think it's cool," Jonah said. "You've got the only Togetic I've ever seen, and your Gardevoir is super powerful. You probably could be a gym leader if you wanted."

"But I'm on Team Rocket."

"So? What's so great about Team Rocket that you'd rather keep doing that? What do you even do besides try to steal my Pokemon?"

"We make cool machines to help us steal your Pokemon," Max said. "Team Rocket is my family, I can't just abandon it."

"If you say so," Jonah said. 

"No, I mean my actual family. My dad is on Team Rocket. So's her dad. It's my family."

" _Oh_ ," Jonah said. "Okay, that makes things make a little more sense."

"It would be nice, though. To be a gym leader." Max's voice was wistful.

"Clefairy."

"Oh please, like you wouldn't love the attention."

"Fairy, Clefairy!"

"Of course I wouldn't make you evolve if you didn't want to!"

"Clefairy."

"Well, If you want a Moon Stone say the word! You're giving me really mixed messages here, Clefairy."

"Hmph." Clefairy pouted, and Max shook his head. 

"Thank you for giving my Pokemon an existential crisis," he said to Jonah.

"I don't even know how that happened, I'm not taking responsibility for it," Jonah said. "But plenty of gym leaders have Pokemon that aren't in their final form."

"Yeah, I know that, but she gets all weird about it."

"You care too much about her feelings," Kinga said scornfully. Whatever she was going to say to follow that up was interrupted by Clefairy launching at her with a Double Slap attack. She shrieked and threw her arms up. Max lunged and wrapped his arms around Clefairy, pulling her back.

"Clefairy!"

"I know she deserved it but you can't keep doing it!"

"I just realized why you guys are never going to get any of my Pokemon," Jonah said. "There's no way in hell I'm ever giving  _her_  a single one of my friends, and Max can't beat me because his fairy types are weaker because they hate Kinga."

"Clefairy," Clefairy sighed, and Max put her down.

"Really?"

"Fairy..."

"Well, you could have said something sooner. I thought you just didn't like each other, I didn't realize it was  _that_ bad."

"You mean... I make him suck?" Kinga sounded unpleasantly surprised. "He wouldn't suck if I wasn't around screwing up his team?" The way she was looking at Max wasn't any sort of expression Jonah had ever seen on her face before. She almost seemed like she wasn't a heartless jerk.

"There's only one way to find out," Jonah said. "You have to let him go."

"I can't just walk away from her," Max said, but he wouldn't look over at her. "We've been a team... forever. I don't know... I don't know who I am without her."

"That's exactly the point I'm making," Jonah said. "You can come with me if you want. You actually know where I'm heading next."

"I don't--"

"Go with him," Kinga said in a rush, clearly forcing the words out. "He's right. You'll be better off without me. Your Pokemon are really strong and I'm making them weaker. You probably can become a gym leader if you battle with them at full strength." She pulled her pack onto her lap and rummaged through it, then held out a Pokeball to Max. "Here. She'll be better off with you and without me, too."

"Your Alolan Ninetales?" 

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure she hates me too. Maybe I'll try again with a regular Vulpix." 

"Are you... really going to let me walk away?"

"Depends. If you stay with the twerp, I'll just have to steal your Pokemon too," she said with a smirk.

"Clefairy."

"Yeah, I know you'll kick her ass twice as hard if she tries," Max told his Pokemon, who smirked back at Kinga. Kinga rolled her eyes.

"I can't keep holding you back. You deserve to be the very best."

"Thank you, Kinga."

"Don't get all mushy on me. I'll probably be better off without you too."

"You're going to be a disaster without me. I give you a week before you go running home."

" _Excuse me_?"

"Maybe you should not rub it in," Jonah said. "The two of you were a pretty comprehensive disaster together, so you might both individually be disasters too."

"I guess you'll find out," Max said. "I think I'll be okay, though. I'm going to have to go to Kalos to find the fairy type gym, I guess I'll do that after I help you find the Shinx."

"If you're not a disaster maybe we could stick together on the way to Kalos. I want a Helioptile for my team, too."

"I'll see you there, then," Kinga said. "And you'd better prepare for trouble."

"But not make it double," Max said.

"I bet you can't resist saying it with me when I show up."

"Probably not," he laughed. "It's more like muscle memory than habit by now."

"As long as you don't just hand her your Pokemon when she holds us up," Jonah said.

"Are you kidding? Clefairy's not the only one who hates her. She said  _all_ of them do. I could never give them to her."

"When Jonah said you shouldn't rub it in, he was right," Kinga said. "I'm definitely going Jigglypuff on your ass while you're asleep."

"That's so on brand of you," Jonah said.

"She hates you too," Max said.

" _Ugh_ ," Kinga said, grabbed her sleeping bag from their pile of gear, and walked away. "We'll sort out our stuff in the morning. I've had enough of you twerps."

"I'm a twerp," Max said wonderingly. 

"How does it feel?" Jonah asked. 

"Not sure."

"Fairy..."

"That's not true."

"Clefairy!" Clefairy stood up and poked Max in the chest, and he sighed and lowered his voice.

"It's kinda exciting," he said, and gazed down the cave to where Kinga had gone. She didn't yell at him, and he looked up at Jonah. "Do you really think I'm a disaster too?"

"No, Max," Jonah said. "I think you're going to do just fine."


End file.
